'My Brilliant Friend' Season 2 Episode 1 sees Elena and Lila rebel against the men in their lives
In Season 1 of 'My Brilliant Friend', the narrative was grounded in the universe of the two girls, Lila and Lenu aka Elena, where violence would occasionally come careening into their lives and change its course.
In Season 2, we see that violence takes center stage in Lila's life as she becomes the wife (and property) of Stephano Carracci. Till now, it was easy to see that Lila and Lenu's mothers as needlessly cruel, benumbed, exhausted. But with just this one episode, we see how they came to be that way.
Lila is also similarly blank-faced when Lenu comes to visit her in her swanky new apartment. After facing beatings and rapes, no longer having any real agency once she marries Stefano, she shows Lenu the house, almost mocking herself as the mistress of a golden cage. She knows what she has lost to gain a prosperous address and its fancy fixtures and fittings. At first, Lenu is excited, following her from room to room, till she notices Lila's body language and dead voice.
This is when Lenu removes Lila's sunglasses to see her bruised eye. Both she and Lila now know that they had miscalculated when they decided to trust Stephano as Lila's best bet to escape Marcello Solara's violent romantic pursuit.
With Stephano turning into a monster once he "owns" Lila, her future is bleak. It serves as a warning to Lenu, who is thinking of dropping out of school and just marrying Antonio — a train of thought brought on by Nino not publishing her article and a sense of competition with Lila.
Lenu's Antonio, while not violent, is also controlling. He barks at her for wearing makeup and is terribly jealous of Nino.
In Episode 1 this season, he speaks of his fears to Lenu. She is beautiful with prospects because she has educated herself and speaks Italian without an accent. In short, she is exactly the kind of person who can leave the violent and poor neighborhood and do well for herself.
There is no doubt that Lenu will do better than him in the future and he is scared she will leave him sooner than later. Lenu, by keeping her crush on Nino a secret from Antonio, is seeking to rebel but isn't bold enough to break up with him.
Her passiveness might stem from the fact that Lenu, unlike Lila, has a real choice between leaving and staying. However, all Lila had, deprived of an education, was the false choice between Marcello and Stephano.
It is something she realizes by the end of the episode when she understands that there is no difference between the two — one is just as bad as the other — however, Marcello is the one with the real power.
Exercising the agency that has been brutally snatched away from her, Lila decides to flirt with Marcello to spite Stephano. She decides to rebel precisely because she knows she has been used as a bargaining chip. Since Marcello is the one man Stephano can't mess with, her object of seduction couldn't be more obvious as she dabs on the lipstick and goes for a classic little black dress.
Lenu is understandably wary of the whole scheme as is the audience as Lila recklessly plays with fire, hoping to burn down her golden cage.
My Brilliant Friend' airs on Mondays on HBO at 10 pm/9 c.